These guys can score. But as someone mentioned, they really struggle defensively. At the very least, we should get all the open looks at three pointers that we want. When teams make their threes against the Bonnies, the Bonnies usually lose.

I thought we did a good job yesterday of mixing up the inside and outside, as well as getting some easy buckets in transition. If we can find that mix again we should score a lot of points. The trick will be to slow them down some. To avoid foul trouble, I'd like to see Pipkins relax a bit on going for steals and just play excellent solid defense against their excellent guards. I have less confidence in our other guards ability to slow down Adams and Mosely, so I think we'llnneed Pip out there as much as possible.

1. Value the ball. We can't give them a lot of extra possessions.
2. Keep them off the line. They are an excellent free throw shooting team (76%) and average 19 points from the line per game. I still have nightmares about a couple of games in the recent past when they were something like 32/33 and 30/34.

I have watched just about every min of every game and outside of the last game or two some of his lack of decisions are disappointing. How many games this year have we gone into the last 3 min nursing a lead and almost blowing the game by not calling time outs, running a slow offense taking the clock down to 10 seconds and throwing up a desperation shot just before the buzzer. He is not a new head coach. By now he should have learned to make quick adjustments. He spent enough time assisting Cal to have learned that. Sure we have a nice winning OOC record but hardly against quality opponents.

As I said in an earlier post "the moment of truth has arrived" now we will see how well we do. The Bonnies and St. Joe always seem to find a way to beat us when we are supposed to beat them. I really don't have that much confidence in Dk going to take us deep into the NCAA tournament anytime soon if ever. I was at NC State a couple of years ago when we got beat in the opening round and I can say that truthfully in going to and watching UMass games since 1968 it was the first time I ever walked out of a game with about 10 min left to play.

Berkman wrote:I have watched just about every min of every game and outside of the last game or two some of his lack of decisions are disappointing. How many games this year have we gone into the last 3 min nursing a lead and almost blowing the game by not calling time outs, running a slow offense taking the clock down to 10 seconds and throwing up a desperation shot just before the buzzer. He is not a new head coach. By now he should have learned to make quick adjustments. He spent enough time assisting Cal to have learned that. Sure we have a nice winning OOC record but hardly against quality opponents.

As I said in an earlier post "the moment of truth has arrived" now we will see how well we do. The Bonnies and St. Joe always seem to find a way to beat us when we are supposed to beat them. I really don't have that much confidence in Dk going to take us deep into the NCAA tournament anytime soon if ever. I was at NC State a couple of years ago when we got beat in the opening round and I can say that truthfully in going to and watching UMass games since 1968 it was the first time I ever walked out of a game with about 10 min left to play.

Sounds like one of the Fire Kellogg posse members is getting fired up for a shitty conference run. If they happen to lose a few you'll have a lot of company, I'm sure.

Ole Miss is the only game where I will knock DK for the stall offense and mismanaging a lead. He's been fine with that otherwise.

Nope, you refused to rewatch that game to see that you were wrong. DK has not been perfect, far from it, but at worst, the UMass coaching this year has been on par with what you'd expect for an upper half A10 team. Mistakes have been made, but so too have adjustments been made.

Chris20 wrote:These guys can score. But as someone mentioned, they really struggle defensively. At the very least, we should get all the open looks at three pointers that we want. When teams make their threes against the Bonnies, the Bonnies usually lose.

I thought we did a good job yesterday of mixing up the inside and outside, as well as getting some easy buckets in transition. If we can find that mix again we should score a lot of points. The trick will be to slow them down some. To avoid foul trouble, I'd like to see Pipkins relax a bit on going for steals and just play excellent solid defense against their excellent guards. I have less confidence in our other guards ability to slow down Adams and Mosely, so I think we'llnneed Pip out there as much as possible.

Looking at the stats, this is a really interesting match-up.

Check this link out and you can see that UMass has a strong defense/weak offense, while SBU is just the opposite. Going up and down the line there are a lot of instances where UMass' strength goes up against SBU strength and UMass' weakness goes up against SBU weakness.https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-baske ... efficiency

SBU has virtually no depth and struggles to defend. Their backcourt of Adams & Mobley really carries them offensively. I think UMass just needs to play their game, keep the tempo up, play great defense and pressure their guards especially on the 3pt line and this is a good matchup for UMass, I think they'll come away with the win.